Your Right to Know

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea sentenced an American citizen to 15 years of hard labor
yesterday for crimes against the state, prompting a U.S. call for his amnesty in hopes he won’t
become a bargaining chip between the countries.

Kenneth Bae, 44, was born in South Korea but is a naturalized citizen and attended the
University of Oregon. His sentencing comes after two months of saber-rattling that saw North Korea
threaten the United States and South Korea with nuclear war.

Pyongyang has previously tried to use American prisoners as bargaining chips in talks with
Washington. A U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Washington was not looking
for an envoy to try to secure Bae’s release.

The official said the United States has sought in recent years to break out of its pattern of
lurching from one crisis to another with the North, only to resolve them with deals with
Pyongyang.

Bruce Klingner, a retired CIA North Korea analyst, dismissed the idea that Bae’s release would
trigger the renewal of long-stalled diplomacy.

“Previous arrests of U.S. citizens didn’t lead to changes in North Korean policy, resumption of
bilateral dialogue or breakthroughs in U.S.-North Korean relations,” said Klingner, a senior fellow
at the Heritage Foundation research group in Washington.

A North Korean defector said Bae will likely serve his sentence in a special facility for
foreigners, not in one of the repressive state’s forced-labor camps. More than 200,000 people are
incarcerated in these camps, beaten and starved, sometimes to death, according to human-rights
groups.

Bae is believed to be a devout Christian, according to human-rights activists in South Korea,
who say he might have been arrested for taking pictures of starving children.

He was part of a group of five tourists who visited the northeastern city of Rajin in November
and has been held since then. According to U.S. media, Bae most recently lived in the Seattle
area.

Former U.N. Ambassador Bill Richardson, who has made numerous trips to North Korea that included
efforts to free detained Americans, said Bae’s case should not become entangled in the current
U.S.-North Korea impasse.

“Now that the sentencing and the North Korean legal process has been completed, it is important
that negotiations begin to secure Kenneth Bae’s release on humanitarian grounds or a general
amnesty,” said Richardson, who visited North Korea in January with Google CEO Eric Schmidt.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said any negotiations with North Korea are “dependent upon the
North Koreans demonstrating a willingness to live up to their international obligations.”

North Korea is the subject of U.N. Security Council resolutions calling for an end to its
nuclear and missile tests, as well as punitive U.N. sanctions.